[Novalug] Hardware : Compaq Presario 1700 -- goofed up?

[Beartooth]

 	I have a friend to whom I've long bragged that linux runs 
better on old small slow machines that Windows. Now I have his 
old laptop on my desk, trying to put linux on it for him, 
replacing W2K.

 	When I eventually got it to boot from media, the first 
FC6 install disk told me way early that I didn't have much 
memory, and it would have to start swapping right away; I told it 
OK to that. When it got to Grub, I told it to go ahead and put 
that in the MBR. First mistake right there, maybe.

 	Shortly after that, I got some sort of error messages 
which I didn't understand, except that it ended by saying it was 
aborting the install.

 	Trying again, it tries to boot to W2K; but halfway 
through that, I get a long error message about "inaccessible boot 
device." That tells me to run CHKDSK /F (after doing hardware 
things that're Greek to me), but doesn't seem to have a prompt.

 	It doesn't even try to start booting FC6, Ubuntu, nor 
Knoppix afaict.

 	Is this machine toast, or can it be salvaged?


-- 
Beartooth Bookworm, Reading Intensely
I'm not either absent-minded! I'm single-minded.
There's a difference.